Alternative Service Book

The Alternative Service Book 1980 (ASB) was the first complete prayer book produced by the Church of England since 1662. Its name derives from the fact that it was proposed not as a replacement for the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) but merely as an alternative to it. In practice, it was so popular that the various printers had to produce several editions very quickly and churches which retained the BCP drew attention to this fact as something to be noted. The Prayer Book Society was soon complaining that it was becoming hard to find a church which used the old prayer book and that theological colleges were not introducing students to it. It has now been replaced by Common Worship.

Following the failure of the attempts to introduce a new prayer book through Parliament in the 1920s, liturgical reform had idled.

Some Anglo-Catholic parishes used the English Missal, a version of the BCP which included the prayers of the Latin Mass both in translation and in the original interspersed with prayers from the prayer book; most used either the BCP or the 1928 Prayer Book, which though it was never approved has continued in print until the present with the warning "The publication of this book does not directly or indirectly imply that it can be regarded as authorized for use in churches." As time passed and liturgical scholarship proceeded, it became clear that a new attempt should be made to provide orders of service for the church. In an attempt to break the deadlock, Dom Gregory Dix, in his book The Shape of the Liturgy published in 1945, proposed that his own thinking about the Eucharist, using what he called the "Four Action Shape", be the basis of a rite. He suggested that such a rite be produced by a number of bishops, too many for them to be victimised but not so many so as to suggest rebellion, who would allow such a rite to be used in their own dioceses but who would not protect parish clergy from legal challenge if they used it. Dix's ideas were very influential but no one took up the suggestion.

Only in 1955 did the church set up the Liturgical Commission and ten years later the Church Assembly passed the Prayer Book (Alternative and Other Services) Measure 1965. A series of books followed: the Series 1 communion book scarcely differed from the 1928 book (as was the case with its wedding service). Series 2, issued at the same time, put forward a form which followed the Dix formula: offertory, consecration, fraction, communion. This was a pattern which was to be widely influential in countries which had used the BCP.

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